


Kifu

by Nope



Category: Hikaru no Go
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-22
Updated: 2004-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-25 03:39:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1629530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nope/pseuds/Nope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ogata won, he's sure of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kifu

**Author's Note:**

> Written for hua

 

 

Ogata-sensei hates Touya-san; Ogata-san loves Akira-kun. Seiji Ogata hears both, whispered and giggled among the onlookers as he waits for the elevator, as he strides past, as he takes the stairs, two at a time. Going out. That's what he's doing. He's just moving on. Not running away at all.

(And just before this, he's sitting in the game room for the Honinbo league, telling the onlookers that Akira Touya wasn't intimidated playing a man who has been his father's student before he was born, wasn't intimidated playing a tournament game against someone he'd only met in their study group, that this was a true game of skill.)

His feet hit rhythmically, tap-tapping on the edges of the stairs, down and down and down again. Such a long way to fall. Footsteps echoing in the stairwell, chasing him down. Faster and faster until he comes out on the landing and yanks the inner door open and barges through the outer door, out into the wide open parking bays.

(And a few hours before that he's sat out in an empty corridor, smoking a cigarette, thinking how this is all inevitable, how the stones have fallen and patterns made and now this is where the next move must be, how the day has come so slowly, come so fast.)

He unlocks his car and opens the door, but doesn't get in. There's a pack of Lark cigarettes in his pocket. Just like always. Totemic, almost. No, he's Ogata ten-dan. He has no need of superstition. Just nicotine. So he pulls one out, and lights it, and takes a long drag, and gets in his car, and pretends not to notice that his hands are shaking.

(And two, three years before this, he's sitting with the study group in Touya Mejin's house, saying, "Even though he'll be a pro next month, Akira-kun still looks like a cute junior high school student" and Akira's there, across the goban, soft and self-consciously smiling, while the others talk to him and about him and Touya-sensei watches the board and Ogata watches Akira.)

The first cigarette inhaled down to ash, Ogata stubs it out and lights another, before starting the car, engine howl and wheel scream echoing as it leaps from its space, bounces up the ramp and swings out into the traffic, weaving at speed. Half-way home he makes an abrupt right and heads instead towards the Go Institute, slows as he passes, but drives on. Stops at the first bar he comes to. Leaves the car, cooling at the curb. Goes in.

(And three hours before this, they're face to face across the goban, across the game, Ogata in his white suit, Akira's dark, opposing colours, opposing stones; and he sees the strength and relentless determination in Akira's stones, in his methodical, unhesitating attack, and in Akira's eyes cold fire burning, the eyes of a swordsman, of a samurai, seeing between life and death; Akira, leaping forward, unafraid of the waiting blade.)

There's a man drinking shots at the bar. The sharp cracks of the glasses, slammed one after each other down, make Ogata wince; he takes his beer and retires to a corner table. The table-cloth is red, a darker red grid on a light red background. Poorly-lit, it looks like blood against the white shine of his clothes, a goban drenched in blood.

(And four hours before this, he makes a deft attack and Akira just as deftly reads through it, escaping the trap and coming back unexpectedly from the corner, forcing a retreat.)

'You won,' he tells himself. 'Stop thinking like this.' But he can feel eyes on him and, when he looks up, there are eyes on him, and he thinks for a moment that it's Akira, that Akira has followed him here, but then she moves and the resemblance fades. Just a woman at the bar. In his head, he can hear Kuwabara's mocking monkey-laugh. He sneers into his beer.

(And years previously, before a different Honinbo league game, he tells Kuwabara, "a new wave is coming to the go world" and he thinks of Akira, and of Hikaru chasing Akira into the world of the pros, of Akira saying "I won't let him near me", shouting it almost, angry and driven, Akira who is coming up, rushing up behind them; Kuwabara laughs and makes sure to show Ogata his signature: 'immovable Honinbo'.)

This is what they do. Attack opponents any way they can. Make patterns. Seize territory. Create universes with their hands. All striving to become God on the top of the goban. Driven onwards by the question. "Who is stronger? Who is weaker?" he thinks and there's a startled noise and he realises he has said it as well, and he looks up to see the woman has approached his table. She says something of which all he catches is his name. The resemblance to Akira is back. Slim. Pale eyes. Dark hair hanging. A not unattractive sharpness to the features. She says something else and he's still not listening, but he waves a hand at the seat opposite and she takes it with a pleased smile.

(And a decade before, Ogata, still a teenager himself, smiles back at Akira across the goban and listens to father and son discuss the game they have just played, the boy's small hands placing the stones with the easy dexterity of a much older man, eyes bright and joyous and fixed on the board through the hanging bangs, listening intently when his father speaks, when Ogata speaks, his attention like a laser, like standing in a spotlight, bright and addictive.)

They're drinking and talking, this woman and him. His responses are automatic. Well trained. He's still thinking about Kouyo Touya. Like first hand Tengen. Out there, in the middle of the board, at the centre of this era, disrupting everything, waiting as the game is played around him. Touya-sensei, who Ogata had fought to reach, and arrived just in time to watch his master, his 'rival', retire after playing Sai who has some unexplained connection to Hikaru who is chasing Akira who is chasing Sai. Ogata chasing them all. And round and round and round they go.

(And four, almost five hours before Ogata and the woman leave the bar together, Ogata has taken off his glasses, has closed his eyes as he delivers his blow, closed his eyes against Akira, is saying, "It was a difference in skill that decided the match," is saying, "he has the spirit, but it is quite clear," is saying: "Akira-kun, you are beneath me.")

Lips against his and they're barely in the room. This is a game too, with its own rules, its good moves and its bad. A hand here. A kiss there. Knowing when to slow down, when to redouble efforts. Speed. Direction. Her, backed up against the fish-tank, black against its blue light, the only light in the room. Blind closed against the street lights. Against the world. Just the two of them, alone, at the centre of everything. His arms around her, his hands brush the goban as they move around it, tumbling into bed.

(And back in May, he's still drunk, demanding Hikaru let him play Sai, the way Akira has, the way Kouyo has, this invisible genius Hikaru and the Touyas seem fixed upon, drunk and inviting Hikaru up to his room, and they play there, by the windows, in the city lights, and for a moment he sees Sai in Hikaru, sees Akira, chasing and chased by, Akira and Hikaru, moving together, alone together in their own separate game which he can only observe, never join, and when, afterwards, Hikaru starts missing games and Akira grows colder and colder, he feels almost triumphant.)

In the blue light, in the deep shadows, she moves against him and Ogata sees Akira. They have the same eyes and here, thrusting together, the same intensity, the same passion, the same relentless drive towards their goal. Black hair falling on pale skin. His features. Curves where there shouldn't be. Akira sliding in and out below him as they move, as the shadows move, coming together, him into her, her into him. Like grasping ghosts. Like reaching for the divine. Rising upwards, ever upwards.

(And before this, he slams home on the goban, sealing this victory against Akira, and some weeks before that Hikaru, returning, seeks Akira out and when Ogata sees him after, the renewed light in the boys eyes, burning, storm light, sheer takes his breath away.)

Sleep takes the resemblance from her, like a ghost departing, to be seen only in dreams, never to be touched. A lack of control in the casualness of a flung arm, a bared breast, that Akira would never allow himself. Just a body in the bed. The thick, raw, scent of sex. Ogata slips from the bed, sits in the window. Opens the blinds and the window, let the smells out, the cool air in. Lights a cigarette. Tastes ashes in his mouth.

(And before, and before, and before, each time Akira slipped, each time Akira seemed to grow, not weak, never weak, Akira would never allow himself to be weak, but bored, cold and passionless, Ogata was there to goad him on, to use Hikaru to enrage Akira, to chase Akira into Ogata's reach and, then, suddenly, finally Akira is there, and all Ogata can say is "You are beneath me" and all he can think is 'and rising fast' and wonder at his shaking hands.)

No. Enough of this. Akira Touya is just another player, like all the rest. And he is Seji Ogata, ten-dan, Gosei, and soon to be Honinbo. He is a titled, professional Go player, irrevocably set upon the path to the prefect move, to the hand against which only the God of Go could hope to play. He is Ogata-sensei, and he is his Go, and that is enough. And he smiles. And he sleeps.

(But he dreams of Sai's hand in the darkness, of Hikaru racing, and of Akira, always of Akira, all sleek and sharp, of those cold, killing eyes, of Akira turning away, away from him; and when he sits, as he always does, and looks across the goban, he finds no-one waiting for him.)

 


End file.
